


Between Two Points

by letterfromathief



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-11 08:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4427960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letterfromathief/pseuds/letterfromathief
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pulled in by a dream better than her reality, Emma Swan travels to a world where nothing will ever hurt her again. A land outside of time itself, a place where fate and destiny cannot touch her - but chance is fickle in its ways. It can go where others cannot, and one chance encounter is enough to bring her world crashing down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. So My Shadow Will Cover

She wrapped her anger and hurt around her and it became her shadow. _Friends forever_. It was a cruel dream, and yet Emma tossed and turned in that place where they could have run away together and been a family if Lily hadn’t been a liar like all the rest.

Family was something she would never have. Emma was never meant to be a daughter.

It was a _cruel_ dream. A childish fantasy that played in her sleeping mind in the backseat of a car to nowhere – another foster home, another house of misfit children who would only ever find envy in the families on TV and the chosen few who joined that illustrious world of family life.

The cruelty was that it was beautiful.

Island after island of trees with canopies of bright green to green so dark it was almost black with veins so red they looked painted on. Trees and animals of bright colors that she had only ever seen in library books or on the nature channel shows one of her first “official” foster parents watched while Emma cleaned up after them. Nine at the time, she much preferred sneaking glances at the TV than sweeping. Like those shows, there were screaming brown monkeys and cawing birds of all sizes and designs – and even, black cougars with fierce roars and sharp white teeth.

There were even mermaids with scaled tails of every color Emma could imagine and more. They would splash in the waters of their very own lagoon off the coast of Emma’s favorite island.

If she had to give it a name, she would have called it Swan Song because as she flew through the trees, a melody played in her head. It was not unlike the beating of drums.

In the center of the island was a treehouse with levels that climbed up higher than any building Emma had ever seen. Ladders to nowhere and ladders to rooms filled with trinkets, books, food of all kinds – all the things Emma had never had. In her room, the one at the very top, across her pillow of feathers lay her baby blanket, carefully aligned so that when she fell asleep, the last thing she saw was her name, the only thing her parents had ever given her.

Best of all, there was no one else. No parents to never find her. No friends to promise her the world and say they were just like her when they _had_ a family. No one to tell Emma _they_ felt invisible when she’d run away from her foster home and not one person had come looking for her.

On the Swan Islands, Emma was all alone, with nothing but her shadow to track her steps. To her shadow, she wasn’t invisible. It followed her everywhere, did everything she did, and when she felt lonely – remembering Lily’s lies and empty promises, the foster homes and the foster kids, and her parents who _never_ came and never would – her shadow would wrap its arms around her until all she could see was the blackness that sucked out all the light.

The cruelest dreams were the ones that never came true, so perhaps her dream wasn’t as cruel as the woman with the hard frown that promised Emma she would get her back to a “proper home.”

For when Emma awoke, the van with its stained grey seats, darkened windows, and radio that only seemed to play old people news stations had disappeared. Golden sand slid between her painted toes and the beach of her dreams lay before her. The white, frothing sea that surrounded the island stretched out all the way to the horizon. In the distance, she could see a tail of shimmering blue smack across the water and disappear beneath it.

Emma collapsed against the ground. The sun was bright but it didn’t hurt her eyes. Nothing could hurt her here, not the memories of her past or the hopelessness of her future. Here, time didn’t matter at all. It faded into nothing but darkened images of a world that she no longer lived in. Nothing mattered but monkeys swinging through the trees and the cougars prowling the gloom of the forests.

She laughed, at first just to make sure she could, and soon it became giddy, uncontrollable. Her laughter became part of the chorus of birds, roars, and screams.

In her ears, the drums played to the sound of her shadow’s black heart, pressed to her cheek and beating the same as her own.

-

On the smallest island, far, far away from Swan Song, as if it was never meant to be found by anyone or any creature of her world, there was a clock tower, raised high to the sky.

It was something Emma never dreamed or imagined. It was inexplicable in its presence on this barren island of grey rock and cold dirt and confusing to her senses. No matter how much Emma wished it away, it stayed.

No matter how hard she tugged at the door, it would not open. The rocks she threw, the weapons she summoned with a flick of her wrist – none of them made a dent in the windows, doors, or the clock with its face that winked at Emma if she looked at it just right.

It was _wrong_. Even her shadow could not get through its barriers as if it had no power over it, and the shadow had power over everything.

So, the Storybrooke Free Public Library stayed in its corner of her world, tucked all the way at the edges, and yet, always pressing on Emma’s mind.


	2. Falling Footsteps Weighing Heavy On Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I'm not a fan of short chapters and it's AU week, I decided to celebrate by posting another chapter on the same day. As always, feedback is welcome

He heard drums.

It was the first thing Killian sensed when he and Liam stepped out onto the shore of the largest island. Second star to the right and straight on till’ morning could not have been more accurate. They sailed – or flew – all night, or whatever passed for night when stars had glittered before them, so bright that Killian wondered if he reached out, could he grab one of them?

He hadn’t tried. The tale of Icarus was one they told many times amongst the boys Killian lived with on the streets after his father left. Before Liam found him. He could not go too near the sun or it would surely snuff him out with its shine.

Perhaps it was his weariness that produced the sound. Whatever it was, it was annoying, so Killian turned to look around to see if there was a source to it.

Everything about the island was lush and the trees were verdant with life. He could hear the cawing of monkeys and birds whistling harmonies to each other.

Roaring from the trees had him looking around with his hand to the hilt of his sword. As beautiful as everything was, it felt melancholic. It made his chest ache with a feeling without name or identity.

“What exactly does the king hope to find on this island?” he asked.

Liam breached the gap between them with a folded sheet in hand. The roaring grew louder as he unfolded the paper to show Killian a picture of –

“A plant? We journeyed across realms for a plant?”

Incredulous, he frowned at Liam, but he did not mean for his words to have such a tone of annoyance and disrespect. It wasn’t good form at all, but the drumming persisted and tinged his normally proper demeanor.

Liam did not seem to notice. “Our sources say it’s magical, potent enough to heal any injury.”

Killian felt a rush at these words. It was a feeling of relief and wonder that their flight across realms should be for this. _A hero’s journey._

“So we never have to bury another sailor at sea again?”

Midway through his affirmation, a voice sounded behind them.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Killian and Liam, trained by the Navy and taught by the streets, pulled their swords at the same time to face the owner of the voice.

“Are you lost? How did you find this place? Who are you?”

It was a girl.

Killian dropped his sword immediately and after a beat, Liam followed suit. Neither sheathed them, but they remained at their sides. He did not want to be a threat to this girl, in her strange outfit, boyish and patched as if she had sewn it herself, with no regard for style or grace. Its color was a deeper shade of her eyes, and her long blonde hair hung around her shoulders. She did not look old enough to be alone, but there was something about her gaze that he recognized in himself.

It was a look of being left alone, abandoned.

“Who _are_ you?” she repeated.

She enunciated each word as if they had not heard her. Killian scoffed lightly without meaning to. He felt more than saw the look Liam gave him.

“Captain Liam Jones and my lieutenant, Killian. We aren’t lost. We’re here by order of the King, who provided us with directions to find this place.”

Killian would have shot Liam a look and protested his giving away so much about their mission to a stranger if he didn’t share in Liam’s easy trust of a girl so young and so alone.

_If_ he could draw his eyes away from her.

Her eyebrows had risen steadily higher as Liam spoke. When he finished his response, she rolled her eyes.

"Kings?"

The girl laughed as if it was the funniest joke she had ever heard. A beat passed of raucous laughter before she collected herself. The quickness with which her tone changed was whiplash fast. Gone was the humor, and what remained was a voice heavy with power and a cruel edge that was sharp as the teeth of a beast.

"What use are kings here? There’s only _me,_ Emma Swan. _”_

Concern grew fierce in the pit of Killian’s stomach, the beast trying to gnaw its way out.

Liam however was unconcerned by her tone, seeking to question her more. “Where are your parents?”

“You tell me.”

She had a strange way of speaking, but Killian was not confused. Her words were said without the feeling of care for her disappeared parents. Killian, however, still studied her when she answered, and so he caught the split second that she glanced away with a tiny downturn of her lips.

“This isn’t a game, Miss Swan, but if you choose to keep that information to yourself, I shall not press you. Although, I would ask a boon.”

Her face lit up. “A boon?” Speaking more to herself than them, “You must be from some other place for sure. Some place real old, Renfaire type.”

Killian looked over at Liam in question who responded with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Go on, then, ask away and perhaps I shall grant this _boon_.”

The laughter was back. This time the amusement seemed real, lacking the undercurrent her wild laughter had.

Killian did not feel nervous when Liam stepped forward with the picture of the Dreamshade, but the way Emma glanced at the picture and then at Killian set his teeth on edge.

“Have you seen this plant on the island? Can you tell us where to find it?”

“Your king sent you for this? Oh, boy.”

“I’m not a boy,” Liam said. Killian had been about to protest as well, but it seemed the phrase was not directed at either of them for she frowned at the picture.

“Dreamshade is the deadliest plant on this island. Why would your king send you for this? Is he looking to kill someone? A sword would be easier, ya know.”

She eyed Killian’s. He gripped the handle tighter.

“I have no idea what you speak of, Miss. Swan. This plant is medicine, and our king is not a murderer. He is looking to save our people, so we never have to die in pointless battles again.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Battles? Oh, your king is _ruthless_. He wants to wipe out entire armies. That’s cold.”

“Nonsense,” Killian replied.

When he turned toward Liam however he asked, “Is it possible that our King would turn poison upon our enemies?”

Liam’s response was chastising. It stung, just a little when he looked at Killian with almost condescension and said, “Don’t be so gullible.”

Loud enough for Emma to hear, he said, “I do not appreciate your games, Miss. Swan.”

“And I’m not playing them. If you go after this plant, that’s your funeral. I gave you fair warning.”

A mischievous smile grew on her face then. “But you were oh so polite to ask me, so I’ll grant your boon. The center of the island, where the cliffs run high, there is a path that you can take and when you reach the top, the dreamshade will be there.”

Killian narrowed his eyes, but Liam merely bowed and said, “Thank you for your cooperation. Now you should go home to your parents. I’m sure they are worried for you.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Stepping with trepidation, Killian followed his Captain away from Emma, her smile, and her games and towards this plant. He had a duty to stick to, and Liam was right, how could they place faith in so young a girl? Except she didn’t look that much younger than him and he was a lieutenant –

He looked back, just for a second, but she was gone.

Yet, he could swear he heard Emma’s voice echo across the island - _doom, doom, doom_ chasing behind him. Liam didn’t flinch with the sound, not like Killian did. So, Killian ignored the girlish laughter ringing in his ears, and the voice, older and yet the same, that called out his name.

                _Killian, come back to me._

With everything else, he didn’t even notice that the drumming noise had disappeared.

\--

“Well, it certainly doesn’t look like medicine.”

Liam scoffed. “You choose to believe that girl over your King? She probably thought it a humorous affair to try and scare us with her talk of poison.”

“ _That girl_ showed us the path to the dreamshade. Why would she continue the lie about its nature if she thought this a game?”

Liam raised his hands in the air and pointed at the dreamshade. “This is a plant that could heal whole armies, whole lands of the poor and sick. Perhaps, her parents told her to lie in order to divert trespassers. Perhaps they want to keep it all to themselves. Do you actually think our king would send us to retrieve something so dangerous?”

Killian did not know what to address first: Liam’s continued belief in the existence of these parents Emma had disclaimed, the worry that nagged him still at the sight of these thorny, dripping blackened-green vines, or the condescension.

“I certainly hope so. This is not what I signed up for.”

It was true, in a way. Killian had only signed up to be with his brother. Joining Liam was his key to becoming a person Liam would admire and respect. That the Navy helped people was not a secondary reason, but it went alongside with his desire to prove himself to his brother and to the people the raised flag of their ship represented.

“You signed up to listen to your king,” Liam corrected in an obvious dismissal.

“Because I thought he was a man of honor!”

“He _is_.”

Killian uttered his next words as a plea. A plea for consideration. “If this is a poison, it won’t just end the war, it will obliterate an entire race.”

Liam took it as disrespect.

“What do you know of any of this? What would _she_? I’m your brother and your captain. You will listen to me.”

The words felt like the lash of a whip, an undeserved beating. Emma was strange, but she did not deserve his brother’s complete refusal to place any faith in her words, and Killian of all people, did not deserve this.

“No,” he said firmly. Liam looked on in disbelief as he continued. “I’ll fight my enemies, but I’ll fight fair.”

Liam rolled his eyes to the heavens. Unsheathing his sword, he replied, “Then allow me to disabuse you of that notion.”

Liam’s stubbornness, all too much like his own, made Killian’s heart beat faster. When he cut the dreamshade off and raised it before him, Killian couldn’t move.

“Brother don’t!” he said as Liam sliced open his arm with the plant’s thorns.

The blood was red. It didn’t boil. It didn’t smoke. The wound looked as innocent as the cut from a rose’s thorn.

Relief shuddered through Killian and his tension dropped from his shoulders.

“See? The king would never lie to us. Now let us collect our specimen and get back to our land.”

Liam turned away, but paused mid-step. His breath rattled like he was choking on the air in his lungs.

“Liam…”

He faced Killian again, arm held toward him. The cut that looked so innocent before now traced under Liam’s skin in blackened tendrils that moved steadily upward.

“Killian…”

Killian raced over only fast enough to slow his brother’s fall, look into his fearful, widened eyes and hear his choked out apology before Liam’s eyes closed.

His first ‘no’ was wordless. His second was a shaking cry as he tried to awaken his brother. His third ‘no’ was a call for help, over and over again, as the tears began to fall from his eyes.

And yet his brother did not awaken, even as the tears fell on his face, even as Killian pleaded.

Being right and hearing Emma’s words ring true was not his aim. A protective instinct and heroism drove his words on this path where he was now both Icarus’ breathing in the crush of salt water and the tears that struck Daedalus’ heart in two. It hurt as if he had been the one to poison himself.

She found him there, crying over his brother’s body.

“I tried to warn you. He’ll die when the poison reaches his heart.”

He didn’t know why he made the plea to Emma, the orphan who did not care she was so. He made no considerations for the stream of words as Liam’s breathing grew more labored. “Please, he’s my brother. He’s all I have left.”

The flash of anger that split her face did not slip by him. Neither did the passing of it, and how she bit her lip and deliberated over his plea.

“There is a way,” she said, finally.

He came to his feet and walked to her side. Without thinking, he placed his hands on her arms and stared into her eyes. “Please tell me, Emma.”

A moment passed before she wrenched her arms free and stepped towards the cursed vines. With a wave of her hand, they parted and a spring emerged.

Killian stared at her and the waterfall with wide eyes. She merely shrugged.

“The water here, it’s supposed to cure any ill. I’ve never tried it though. I don’t get sick.”

Killian raced past her to fill his canteen from the waterfall.

“Thank you, Emma. I don’t know how to repay you, but whatever you want it’s yours.”

He ran back out, back to Liam’s side where he tilted his head and poured the water down his throat, hoping against hope that it would save him and that his hero’s journey did not end in death.

Liam came back to life slowly and then quite fast. “That’s captain to you.”

Killian smiled and helped Liam to sit up fully, who questioned, “What happened?”

“It was Emma. She saved you.”

Saved _us_.

He stood up then, looked around to find her and offer her his unending gratitude, but she was gone like a puff of smoke.

He called out her name. “Emma!”

But only the sound of drums answered him.

\--

Liam’s death nearly killed him until he turned his self-hatred on his King.

Hating her came second. After his and his crew’s defection, long after Lieutenant Jones became Captain Jones, dread pirate of the sea.

Emma’s smile was of a beast that hungered for him. Her childish games had ended his brother’s life. It was true, that _he_ should have remembered. _All magic came with a price._

It had been a foolish notion of a grief-stricken man to think that he could have been granted such a _boon_ and not have to pay it in kind. But he had no warning, and he had no time to think it through when his brother lay dying before him.

So, he would pay it in kind to his King – and to Emma Swan. He would travel straight on till morning, till night to the end of the world or time to pay her what she was due.

\--

The clock at the top of that awful tower started that day. At first it was the ringing of the bell that had Emma jumping out of her reverie at the mermaid’s lagoon. The sound was louder than any she had heard before, and it _hurt_ , even more than when she took on a cougar and won.  She was already at the island by the time the bell stopped droning on.

That was when ticking began. Tick, tick, ticking away while its hands moved to a beat she did not know. It was if time itself had seeped its way into her world with Killian Jones’ and his brother’s departure.

Emma cursed the ticking sound with every filthy word she remembered – and she _remembered,_ more and more as each minute passed. Even on Swan Song, so far away from the Clock Tower, she could hear its sound. The drumming of her shadow’s heart – louder now as it was, like the war drums from the old westerns she remembered again – could not block it out.

She felt something inside her slip away. A memory maybe, but she did not care because all she could hear was that _fucking_ clock’s ticking.


	3. A Line from Me to You

Emma hated Killian Jones.

With every memory that poured in, she hated him more. They shook her on cold nights when she would grab her baby blanket to her and remember how she used to hold it to her chest and cry silent tears so no one would scold her for them, or worse, laugh. Wracked with a feverish rage, she’d go out hunting with the mermaids who once beautiful, now had a row of razors for teeth and eyes as yellow as the eyes of the kittens she would sneak food to before her foster parents caught her and sent them away.

Worse than the memories, he had stolen her solitude.

She had never felt lonely here with her and her shadow, but now she felt it worse than the memories, worse than the constant annoyance of that clock. Worse, even, than how her island’s song had changed. At times it sounded like the clashing of swords, sometimes like heated laughter. 

Some nights she couldn’t sleep, even with the shadow watching over as it always did when she wrapped herself up in the white blanket with the purple threads of her name and closed her eyes. Instead, she would fly around the island over and over again to try to push her body to its limits and force it to rest. As she flew, her Swan Song would change again and she would hear someone crying, far too quiet to make much of a sound.

Her shadow took to sulking outside the Clock Tower. She was sure it bothered her much more than it bothered her shadow, but when she’d walk through her islands, fingers outstretched towards the bark of the trees and the cougar’s maws, the shadow spent its time at the tower, a silent sentry.

Perhaps, it was just tired of dogging the same steps every day. Emma was tired of it too, in fact.

Most days, she would stand on the beach Killian arrived on and stare out across the endless sea. She waited for something, anything to cease the clawing thing in her chest. The drums beat her into madness. The clock ran on no matter how many obstacles she threw in its way.

And while Emma sat on the beach with her toes gripping the wet sand and her eyes set on the horizon’s reds and blues, her shadow stood before the clock tower and stared at the spinning hands of the clock, as if it looked long enough, it would fade away and take her memory with it.

\--

Killian hated Emma Swan.

But the memory faded to an old hurt, scabbed over and healing slowly. With every kiss from the widow with the dark hair, so unlike the honeyed blonde of Emma’s, and her green eyes that were almost the color of Emma’s but did not hold the same flecks of sunlight that hers did.

Or perhaps he was remembering her wrong, when he cared to remember at all.

Milah was a much better present than the past he chose to leave behind. It was not that he did not still carry his rage or his desire for vengeance – or revenge, he had forgotten the difference many glasses of Misthaven’s Best Whisky ago. Through no fault of Milah’s presence or her carefree smile gifted only to him, Killian still did, but he carried it like an accustomed weight; it was just another piece of him now.

She was an addition he could never have hoped for when he was burning the King’s ships in their harbor. When he raided ship after ship, taking only what they could afford to lose, at first. As times passed, they could afford a lot more and Killian took with glee rather than the righteous anger that threw him into this life with Liam’s body cast into the sea.

He never dreamed he’d have Milah. Their meeting was pure chance in a tavern at a port they’d only stopped in because some of their food had spoiled and they needed a clean sweep to make sure he and his crew didn’t catch disease and die. The irony of his past wish, so long ago when he was Lieutenant Jones standing on that beach in Neverland, was not lost on him.

The beauty of her smile was not lost on him either. Neither was her seduction. She started it with a game of dice that over hours of play and flirtations and talk turned into an all or nothing roll for his ship or her.

She won, and he did too.

When Killian was in her arms, he did not hate Emma Swan or even his King. The only thing he hated was the fact that he would have to leave their warm embrace.

They spent nights talking over their futures. The touches they shared were enough ruminating over the past for the both of them. She would slide her fingers over his scars from battles hard fought with both armies and drink. He would press kisses to old wounds that spoke of things lost. In the Captain’s bed, with the sheets tossed to the floor and the moonlight filtering in, they would become one, in body and mind.

It was a future shared and a past tossed into the bottom of the sea where it belonged like all things dead and buried.

\--

He was not who Emma waited for and nor did he show up on the beach as she expected.

He was, in fact, not a man with a stupid ponytail and uniform nor did he have the same uncomfortable stare that Killian Jones focused on her the moment she touched down behind him and his rude, idiotic brother.

_He_ was a boy in cool looking furs with curly hair that circled his head messily. He arrived in a sparkle of purple light, in the middle of _her_ forest as she stalked towards her treehouse, on foot for a change.

A change: that was what he was.

He looked at her like he was confused by her appearance more than his surroundings. Emma looked at him with only a bit of the shock she felt.

He was _not_ who she waited for and she did not expect him.

“Who are you?” he had the nerve to ask when he was in _her_ world, uninvited.

“I ask the questions here,” she snapped in her best imitation of the pirates she used to see on TV. It was a good impression, she would say.

He gaped at her, looked her up and down, and then seemed to gather himself. Fisting his hands at his sides, with a bluster of courage, he said, “I’m Baelfire. Now, who are you?”

Killian and his king flickered into view. She grinned. “I’m the King of this land. I am Emma Swan.”

His hesitant glance and the small rise of his brows made Emma only too happy to prove her point. The ground slowly rose up beneath her until she sat on a throne of dirt. Her crown formed itself from the leaves of the trees and sparkled with the pink dust that grew at the tops of the trees.

It was a good look, but he didn’t appreciate it. He stumbled back and fell. Emma shook her head as he started to crawl away, looking so frightened and angry that at first she was scared herself to approach him.

She corrected the feeling quickly. Emma Swan was not afraid of anything. She had nothing to fear, not with her shadow watching her from the top of her trees, and especially not with the power that flowed through her, in this place of her creation.

“Don’t come any closer!” he shouted. He sounded like he was about to cry.

She sighed. “Oh, come on, don’t be such a baby. I’m not going to hurt you, I promise.”

“I was told I would be safe here. But there’s magic here, too. _You’re_ magic.”

“Yes, but dude, you’re safe with me. Pinky promise.”

She extended the finger out to him. This seemed to break through his anger and fear, for now he just looked confused.

“What’s a pinky promise…and a _dude_?”

She laughed and switched out her pinky to hold out her entire hand. He stared and then he took her hand. Up close, she could tell that he was younger than her and obviously not from the same world that had cast her out.

She wondered for a moment whether he was from Killian’s world. The look of confusion still on his face stopped her from doing so. “A dude is _you_. You’re a dude, and I’m a dudette. Though that sounds dumb, you know. Dude is simple.”

His hand was still in hers so she reached over with the other to fold his fingers back until only his pinky stuck out. She did the same with hers.

“This is a pinky promise. Just like this, we make a promise. Baelfire, I promise you that nothing bad will happen to you here. Only good things. As the King, I can make that promise.”

She shook his finger, but when she tried to let go, he held it. It was a confusing few seconds until he stuttered out, “I promise, Emma, that I’m going to enjoy those good things, here, with you.”

Her face burned. She didn’t know why.

He shook her pinky and finally released it with a smile that was reminiscent of Emma’s when she first felt the sand beneath her feet. Baelfire looked around then, taking in the trees and the leafy plants of the forest clearing. He looked excited.

Emma smiled, and waved him over, “Come on, I’ll show you my pad.”

“What’s a pad?” Baelfire asked.

For the first time in what felt like years, she laughed. As she explained to him “a pad” and that her calling his outfit “dope” didn’t mean it was stupid but actually awesome, she did not notice that her shadow did not follow.

She noticed when she went to sleep after showing Baelfire to his room right beneath hers, and her shadow was not there to watch over her as it always did.

Emma waited, but then decided to go find it, no doubt at the clock tower.

_The clock tower._

For the first time since he left her islands, the clock did not tick. Emma relaxed back onto her bed. This night, she did not need the shadow beside her to put her to sleep. It was blissful silence that lulled her into a sleep not haunted by memory.

When she awoke the next morning, Killian Jones was gone from her mind, as if he had disappeared into the night.

\--

With Milah’s eyes fixed on his and her “I love you” murmured to him, the last words of his dying lover, Killian Jones remembered the bright burning of Icarus flying too close to the sun and ripping his wings to feathers that could not stop his plummet to the murky depths below.

It was seeing the golden green skinned man with his hand crushed around the dust of Milah’s heart through eyes clouded with the blood that would no longer run through Milan’s veins. Her dusted remains reminded him of the sands of the Swan’s Islands.

He was not in his mind when he attacked the demon that wore the poorly adorned visage of a man. He was not even in his mind when the crocodile skinned creature slipped his sword to Killian’s throat and told him he’d have to try harder if he were to kill him.

Killian did not feel the pain of his lost hand.

He was not there. He was too far away for it to feel like anything than what it was: memories come back to haunt him.

Green eyes that stared and winked and smiled like Milah once did.

Milah was dead. To the ocean she would go, and so would they: this creature, Emma, and anyone who stood in his way.

The bean in his remaining hand felt warm to the touch like the sun on a beach he had almost forgotten. On the second star to the right and straight on till morning.

They would not fly this time, yet maybe this time he would hook into that second star and burn them all up with him as he fell to the earth.

\--

Milah had a son.

She had drawn dozens of pictures of him. As much of the time they used to spend planning places to go and wonders to discover, as much as they had focused firmly on their future, she kept her past in the present with her, tucked in the bottom drawer of his quarters.

That was his mistake.

Milah was not him. She was not happy to forget her past. Stupidity kept his vision clouded and in forgetting his own past, he had doomed himself and her in the process.

Of course, the demon with the hatred so unlike Killian’s, so _contemptible_ , without reason or sense – he was the one who had killed Milah. Not Killian.

But Killian had hastened it. In forgetting his past, he had forgotten what happened to those he cared for. His mother, dead to disease. His father gone. His brother, blackened with the poison that took his life.

He had forgotten that his happiness was never meant to last.

Milah had a son. Killian wondered where he could be now, lost from his world and so far from what had once been his home.

He stared at the picture of the child as he might look now. Curly hair and wide eyes with a sadness that he could remember in Milah’s own. He remembered how she would look in the small hand mirror he bought for her sometimes, just staring. Perhaps, she had been trying to see in herself her son’s eyes and how they might look with her so far out to sea and him so much farther away.

An unbearable sadness took grip of his heart. In the distance he could see Emma’s island. He folded the picture in half, over the well-worn crease. He tucked it carefully into the inside of his leather coat, in the pocket where he keeps all his valuables. Trinkets from his past and presents for the future.

He had a potion to distill the poison of the dreamshade into a blade strong enough to kill the crocodile. That rocky cliff with the blackened vines would be his last stop before he left this land.

His first would be to her.

\--

He used to talk about the pieces of his world that Emma had never even imagined possible. Of magic that not only lifted you off your feet, but spun you around and turned you on your head. Of transformation and spells that crossed distances in seconds that wouldn’t be possible in days.

Most of the time, he spoke of this with a bitterness that made Emma not want to ask any more questions.

But she really wanted to know.

When he left to explore the world and his thoughts on his own – he was a rather sad kid to be truthful, but Emma liked him anyway – Emma would try some of the magic he spoke of.

It was strange. Sometimes, when she tried to lift the trees from the ground, levitating bridges and flying ships filled her vision. Changing the shades of the trees became a disguise of Baelfire’s world worn by people of hers. The visions had the echo of memory Emma did not possess.

She tried to avoid all memories, imagined or real, that weren’t ones that Baelfire shared with her. Her own were not nice enough to share.

But time passed – or didn’t as it was in her land – and Baelfire grew bored. Emma felt his boredom in memories that she no longer held. On these islands where anything was possible, even loneliness and boredom could catch you in their grip.

He would wheedle her for information beyond teaching him the meaning of the words she threw at him.

“If this is what your _pad_ looks like in this world, what do pads look like in your world?”

At first she tried to keep her answers short, not wanting to dwell on things like all the “pads” she spent time in. If she only gave him a one or two word answer though – “Smaller. Uglier” – he wouldn’t settle for that.

Well, he would for a moment, but then he got that smile on his face that Emma had learned to mean they were hunting mermaids today. Baelfire didn’t hunt like anyone else did. He chased, laughed, splashed around in the water with the scaled half-women. It was strange. Before Bae arrived, the mermaids had teeth that would bite through bone, but now they only smiled and giggled with human mouths and chased him as he chased them.

The island liked him as much as Emma did.

So, when he got that smile, Emma would just groan after a while and go into detail as much as she could without sharing her hurts. There was no room for that on Swan Song. This was a land of happiness, not weighed down by unnecessary longing for love that she would never have. She didn’t need that.

She had Baelfire.

And as always, she had her shadow. Although, she had taken to just watching Emma and Baelfire, never coming close enough for him to see or notice. Only at night, when Emma would turn into bed would she come back to Emma and watch her sleep.

Even with Baelfire snoring loudly in the room beneath her, the shadow’s presence always sent Emma into a blissful rest where her dreams would be of flying ships, clashing swords, and laughter shared over clinking glasses.

It was during one of these dreams that she was awoken one night.

She sat up in bed. The shadow was gone but Baelfire was there instead. It was still night, the moonlight streaming in through the open window where the Shadow had no doubt flown out of when Baelfire came to bug her.

Emma frowned up at him from where she was seated. He was standing, not even dressed, but instead in a weird imitation of a T-Shirt with the Kiss Tongue on it. The tongue was far more snake like than it should be, the colors were off, and the t-shirt’s sleeves were far too short.

She smiled wider than his shirt’s disembodied mouth.

“What’s up?”

Baelfire bounced on his toes and his hair, now longer and much shaggier than when he arrived in his cloud of purple smoke, bounced with him. He had that smile on his face. Emma began to grow nervous.

“We should go.”

Emma frowned. “Go where?”

He waved his arms over his head in an arc and then pressed them to his badly imagined shirt.

“Your world, we should go there.’’

Emma jumped out of bed. “No!”

Baelfire jumped back. But then he stepped forward again, searching her face. “Why not? Come on, Emma, I know you didn’t like it back there, but this time will be different.”

“There’s no magic on my world. There’s nothing but sadness and dumb t-shirts and pads that are _far_ too small. Nothing will be different.”

He stepped forward, enough to grab the fist folded to her side. With his fingers, gentle like she had imagined a mother’s touch to be, he unfolded her hand and dropped his arrowhead that he’d made one day when they were sitting on the large flat rocks around Swan Lake and skipping stones. It had been too big when he made it, but now it was deformed.

It almost looked like…a Swan.

She did not cry. Emma Swan did not cry, especially not in front of people and especially not _here_.

“Of course it’ll be different this time because you’ll have me.”

He was smiling, that shy smile she saw sometimes when he looked at her. Emma was sure he had a crush. She used to roll her eyes when he did it and goad him into flying around with her so he could calm himself down.

She didn’t roll her eyes and nor did she laugh now because _this_ _time_ she was pretty sure she had a crush too.

“Well, I’m not going unless we pack all the things we need. I mean, we have to have clothes and food and all the stuff we’ve made and…” She trailed off and looked down and away from him. “I don’t even know how to get there.”

Baelfire pulled her to him in an excited motion. Emma looked up at him and gave a small smile at his enthusiasm.

“It doesn’t matter. Anything’s possible on Swan Islands. You can do whatever you want, you’re the King.”

Emma grinned fully. He was right. She _was_ the King. And Kings could do whatever they pleased, no one there to stop them.

A memory tried to take hold of her, but Emma slipped out of its grip with the ease of practice. She whirled her hands and had two suitcases and two backpacks full of their things, everything they would need or want in her world. To her backpack zipper, she looped the stone Swan and then flicked the magic in her wrist. There they stood, wearing proper clothes for her old world.

His Kiss t-shirt actually fit now and the tongue was just right. He looked cool in his leather jacket and dark jeans, like someone she had seen on TV.

For her it was a red flannel top like one she used to wear every other day even when the fabric thinned and threads loosened in the sleeves, leaving holes she could pick at when her anxiety got the best of her. The rest of the look was a pair of jeans, a hat and jacket because the wind blew ice even in here and if they were to get to her world, she’d need to not freeze during the journey.

“We leave tonight,” she said.

“Tonight?”

“Right now.”

His excitement couldn’t be contained. It bubbled out of him in half spoken words and then in his haste to grab his bags and run out the door. He stopped in the doorway, and turned to look at her.

With a sheepish smile, he asked, “How _are_ we getting there?”

Emma’s smile was as mischievous as his when she replied, “How do we get anywhere? We fly!”

Out the window she went and joined Baelfire at the door. With a loud whoop, he flew by her side, following her lead as she left the Swan Islands and Swan Song behind.

She paid no mind to her shadow except to think it was probably where it always went when Emma and Baelfire spent a significant amount of time together. Back to that Clock Tower with the doors that never opened and the clock that never moved.

A bell chimed and an inhuman scream shook her to her core, but the wind blew harder at her, and she shivered up and away from the sound that faded in the cold, whipping breeze.


	4. I'm in love with poisoning

The treehouse he found was deserted.

It was not completely so, but clothes, toys, books and other ornaments were scattered haphazardly about the levels of rooms. Someone had picked through the items and taken only what they would need and what held meaning to them. Emma’s dark green outfit with the patched elbows obviously didn’t for it lay across the bed, forgotten and gathering dust. Wherever she had gone, she would not need it.

In a fit of rage, he jabbed his hook through the wooden paneling of her bedroom wall. It was a child’s design, so it fell to pieces under his blow.

Killian was surprised it still stood at all but stiffened, forgetting his wonder. Something else was out here. He saw the glow from between the flower laden boughs of the trees and he grit his teeth, searching.

“Come out! Whatever beast you are, show your face!” He shouted to the tree line.

With a bird’s glide, the shadow slid between the trees and revealed itself to him. Killian felt his heart pound in his chest, whether with surprise or anger, he could tell no difference.

The shadow looked like her.

Its green eyes glowed more luminescent than those of the young Emma, but it held her shape, as if her shadow had not aged a day and nor had she. This was a place of magic. He had no doubt that when Emma left it, whenever that was, she had left it as he had years before: as youthful as she’d been when she arrived.

He almost laughed then, at his stupid dead brother who had stubbornly believed Emma had lied about her parentage. Years had passed in Misthaven and Killian was much older, but Emma had stayed the same.

Creatures did not have parents.

“Why are still here? Did the Swan girl cast you out?” Killian asked.

If shadows could smile, this one would have. “She did not cast me out. As someone who has been, so many times before, it is no wonder you would assume that.”

The shadow spoke nothing like her. It was a darker, older sound. It did not remind Killian of Emma, but the form...With his eyes closed, he could forget for a moment that she was not here.

Killian stabbed at the dark shape, trying to make it disappear.

“Do not play games with me, wraith. Whatever you are, I will slay you.”

The shadow still could not smile, but it laughed. It rang Killian’s ears with the sound of discordant bells.

“As you’ve slain your crocodile? I will take your threats seriously when they are more than declarations spat from a weak man’s mouth.”

The words hit their mark, yet Killian still stood. His hand ached where it no longer was, reaching out to grasp with fingers that could no longer touch, as ghostly as the shadow that swallowed the night before him. Words could not compare to that pain.

Seeming to sense this, the shadow swayed before him and said, “So you have come to be my companion in Emma’s absence?”

Malevolence took hold, cruelty sharpened by the wits of a man used to reading in between words.

“So, she _did_ abandon you. How unkind. Where did she go off to, then?”

The shadow met him blow for blow. “A place you will never be able to follow.”

“What do you mean, shadow?”

It waved its ghostly hand, grasping at the still air, and then clasped its hands together and rested its head on them. With a deep yawn, it asked, “Do you dream, Captain?”

Killian jerked back in bemusement.

“Dream? Dream of what? What do you dreams have to do with this place – wherever Emma has gone off to -?”

The shadow cut him off with another wide yawn, this time with a hiccup that might’ve been a laugh. “Dreams bring you here, and dreams keep you here. You dream of darkness and so that is where you will stay. Here – in the darkness.”

The words bound him. Magic creeped over him with vines he could not cut away with a simple slice of his sword or even a sawing of his hook. The vines held him down, choking. The shadow spoke truth, and it chilled Killian, ice burning away his anger and leaving a cold determination instead.

“I will find a way.”

The shadow lifted its hands in fake surrender. Killian blinked and saw Emma’s vicious smile in the shadow’s response.

“Like I said, I will believe you when you do it. Words mean nothing, Jones. They’re just…”

It paused long enough that Killian noticed that all was silent around him. No animals cried. No grass crunched or bugs chirped.

“…ashes on the wind.”

No wind whistled through the trees.

All was silent.

\--

In Manhattan, there were no islands of trees with boughs stretching towards the skies and covering the dirt, plants, and flowers on the ground in dark shades. There were no wild animals brightly feathered and colorfully furred. Mermaids did not swim in oceans of white foam and clear green water. Cougars did not pounce from the shadows.

No one could fly and hear the sound of drums beating.

Manhattan held no Baelfire and no King.

Instead there were tall buildings that carved dark shadows on the dirty concrete. The only wild animals to be found were the pigeons, squirrels, stray dogs and cats and diseased rats that littered the subway – and all wore the same grey tinge of the city. Mermaids were a fantasy. Any cougars were zoo escapees, put down before they even had the chance to pounce.

If you could fly over the city, all you would hear was the noise of hundreds of thousands of people breathing, living, and dying.

In Manhattan, Baelfire did not exist, nor did a King, but William Cassidy and Emma Swan got along in the city just fine.

William – _Baelfire_ as Emma still called him whenever they were alone and not creeping out of the custody of cops and social services – loved the city. He loved everything about it from the bad street food, the stores of the cheap knockoffs that he insisted they buy, or steal as was often the case. Any money they had was stolen too anyway. As was their home.

The first thing Emma taught Baelfire was how to hotwire a car. It was something her shadow taught her during her years on Swan Song, laughing the whole time as it insisted that Emma didn’t need it there. Where could she drive on these islands anyway? Emma had whined, and as always, her Shadow had given in.

Baelfire took to it as well as Emma did. He stole the little yellow bug they called home, though finding a place for that home always proved difficult. Parking in Manhattan wasn’t easy to find.

So, they found someplace else.

“Remember that road trip movie we saw?”

“You mean, the one with Britney Spears?”

Baelfire blushed. He’d _really_ liked that movie, more than Emma even. _He must have a thing for blondes._ The thought made her blush just as red as him.

“Emma, _we_ should go on a road trip,” he said.

“Where?”

“Anywhere!”

Anywhere became everywhere. In New Jersey, they spent two whole days at the Six Flags theme park because Baelfire threw up the first day and they had to find someplace to shower anyway.

“Flying is much harder on your stomach than this,” Emma insisted as she led him away from the ride.

“Flying is fun. This is terrible,” Baelfire had said.

Emma hadn’t argued. Baelfire could be as stubborn as her. But the second day, she did have to tease with an “I was right, I was right.” It was about honor. She couldn’t leave it unsaid, could she?

Baelfire had stubbornly refused to sit with her on the ride for two whole rounds, but the third time, he squeezed in beside her before the light haired boy she was talking to even had the chance.

After Jersey, they lost themselves in DC.

“My father had statues like these,” Baelfire admitted, sitting on the steps of the Lincoln memorial. “But they weren’t like this. They didn’t _mean_ anything except that he’d taken it from whoever had them first.”

Baelfire didn’t often speak about his dad, but Emma hated him from what little he said. She’d seen enough monsters on TV and had met enough when she was in the foster system to know what he was. Baelfire didn’t have to say it. Emma saw the way his hands would clench and the tears he never let fall.

Sometimes, her hands would clench too, balled fists of hatred that she’d love to hit his father with if she got the chance. He should be glad she would never get the chance. Baelfire was never going back there.

 _Together_ , that was the promise they made as they hopped from state to state in their little yellow bug with the worn leather seats that were too small for them to sleep in comfortably unless Emma put her feet up on Baelfire’s shoulder, which she always did even though she still woke up with a crick in her neck. It was just funny to see him roll his eyes every morning.

“Your feet smell,” he’d say.

Poking him with her toes, she’d reply, “So does your breath.”

It was _their_ thing.

As was this or, at least, it had become so since Baelfire turned 16 and kissed her over the birthday cake they paid for with money they actually earned from Emma's diner job in Ohio. It seemed fitting then. A true _moment_ never to forget. It made it worth it, this world that she hated - loving Baelfire made it worth it.

Together, they'd make this world their own and while William went to school instead of Baelfire flying around islands and Emma was the King of nothing but the little yellow bug, it was worth it because _together_ was their thing.

\--

“They’ve made it to Kansas,” the Shadow said.

The rock beneath him offered no support to his back, but with his hook dug into it, at least he felt steady enough not to fall off when he reached for the Shadow, a pointless attempt to wring its translucent neck.

“What the bloody hell is Kansas?” he said as he dropped his hand. The Shadow would not be caught by him if it did not wish to be. He learned that lesson the time he wrapped his fingers around its wrist and it dropped him off a cliff into the roar and crash of the sea below. Even drowning beneath the waves, his own blood pounding in his ears, he could hear the Shadow’s teasing laughter.

“Catch me if you can, Captain.”

He’d learned his lesson, but that didn’t mean he had to stop trying. He would not be swayed from his course by the devilish, warping ways of the Shadow.

Still, he was changed in other ways. No longer did he pace the island, ignoring the Shadow’s taunts. He’d lost that battle, but it was a loss for the Shadow as well.

It knew he would listen for one reason only: news of Emma.

“Shadow,” he warned, bending his knees as if to leave.

The Shadow would follow. It always did. The threat only made it laugh, but it was a battle they played out all the same. Who would break first?

Today, it was Killian, it seemed.

“Tell me,” he half-begged. He hadn’t heard news of her in days. Hadn’t seen the Shadow either, only his own wraith haunting his every step around the island and his every tangled thought – of escape, of revenge, of Rumplestiltskin. Of Emma.

Always of Emma because the Shadow would never let him forget her. This world of twisted trees, vicious predators, and fire bright moons remembered her touch and even with his own smothering it, he still found her in every long ago broken branch. In the spear heads tossed carelessly to the ground, darkened with old blood. In that treehouse that still stood despite the storms that blew hard enough to shake the foundations of his ship and leave him trembling in his cabin, sweat on his brow colder than the rain that fell on the sea.

“Kansas is –” The shadow perked as if listening to the wind. There was something like laughter in its call, which the Shadow answered with one of its own. “– as boring and nondescript as the last few places _they_ have been, but _they_ like it there.”

With every “they” the Shadow drove the point like a stake into the places that he held dear: his memories of Milah, his brother, his mother. People he had lost, who had brought him to this place of loneliness with only the Shadow for company.

Had Emma felt this way once? It was a question that plagued him as all the others did, but it was her seeming happiness that drove him to madness. He didn’t understand it. He didn’t understand why she could _have_ it when this land’s magic wormed its way into his soul and stole the last of it from him.

_You dream of darkness and so that is where you will stay. Here – in the darkness._

Perhaps he was weaker than her. She had found her escape from the darkness, found her happiness, and maybe it was his weakness that prevented him from doing the same.

Still, he would not accept that. He remembered her eyes when she'd announced herself - it was a look he'd known then, and knew better now. It was the (no more appropriate word than) _shadow_ that encompassed this island and always had, and it was the very same shadow that he felt pulling at him. He was tethered to this land as much as she was. She may have left the patched outfit behind and flown off to a world of, of cars and Ferris wheels and packaged food, but that blackness had reached into her heart and he knew it would never let go.

Darkness always found a way.

In his vision, he watched a heart crushed to ash, but for once, it is his own held in the palm of - who, he could not see, his sight darkened.

The Shadow laughed and Killian had the eerie feeling that he had heard the sound before.

In another life, perhaps.

\--

They never get caught. Emma at 19 and Baelfire at 17 still looked like what they were: two kids on the run, but it was as if Emma had _some_ magic left because as close as they came at times, she always seemed to find a way out.

She even punched a truancy officer once in Missouri, desperation clawing at her until she ended up clawing back. It wasn’t luck that Baelfire was there with the car and she ran fast enough that the truancy officer never even got the chance to catch their plate, still laid out when he disappeared in their rearview mirror.

It had to be magic.

Emma felt it in her fingers, pulsing in her blood, beating in her heart. Every time Baelfire smiled, Emma felt it beg to be set free.

Sometimes, she'd consider letting it, but he was so happy in this land without magic that she couldn't steal it away. In this world, happiness was hard to find. She would not be the one to take his, especially when it fed into her own.

But the magic called to her, drawing upon her memories of Swan Song and tilting them on their head. Moments imagined of storybook tales come to life, all the while set to the beat of that ticking clock, growing louder every time she tried to focus on these wisps of dreams.

Dreams of beanstalks and giants waiting at the top.

Dreams...

She fell asleep and woke up on the beach of Swan Song.

It was different there now. The dark night felt heavy like a thick winter blanket that she just couldn’t seem to pull off no matter how hard she struggled. It hurt her eyes to look up at the bright moon. The light was sickly – it _made_ Emma sick.

She ended up on her knees, throwing up into the rough crystals of sand that pricked her hands while she tried not to choke on her own breath. Stomach twisted into a pretzel, she looked up.

There was a ship floating in the bay. A ship she knew like she knew her own skin and Baelfire’s smile. She looked for her Shadow, but Emma knew her no longer, so Emma was not surprised when she couldn’t catch her Shadow within her sight.

Gathering her strength, she stepped towards the black water. She would not bow to its darkness. As much as Swan Song had changed, she had been King here too long to let it take control of her. She dove into the water and it parted for her as it always had.

No mermaids tore at her ankles, but she could sense them in the water. Predator sizing up predator. It was a fight they would not win, not now that she had the water snaking through her hands, almost solid enough for her to wield.

The magic came back to her easy, for now she knew with certainty that it had never left. She’d landed on the beach as Emma Swan, runaway. When she alighted on the ship’s deck, it was as a King.

The pirate on the deck never would have stood a chance had their eyes not met. If he’d kept his gaze low to his sword handle a moment longer, she would have summoned that black sea and taken him down under. If he’d kept his gaze low a moment longer, she wouldn’t have seen the blue of his eyes.

The same blue she hadn’t thought of in years.

He was older, but not so much so. She’d aged more than he had.  Time did not pass in Swan Song, so there was no telling how long he had been here.

“Shadow, you’ve taken a new form. Is this some new spell of yours?”

“That’s not my name,” Emma said, the sudden question drawing fury, hot, racing, and boiling her blood.

“Aye, lass, and what is it?”

He sounded bored. More so, he sounded dangerous. When he revealed his hand, Emma was more wary than surprised to see the hook where his hand had been.

“You _know_ my name,” she said. “Your brother accused me of playing games, but that’s what you’re doing right now, isn’t it? Playing a game?”

“Games,” he murmured, eyes shutting. “Is that what we’re doing? And here I thought I was dreaming.”

Silence coiled around them until his laugh broke it, barely a breath’s length of sound. “You’ve grown old, Emma.”

Emma crossed her arms around her chest and the wind came with her, spinning in her hands. Killian’s eyes opened and narrowed.

“So have you,” she said.

“That I have, but we can’t all remain as youthful as you. Although I must say I am surprised. I thought demons to be ageless. You have proved me wrong in that assessment.”

Emma scoffed. “I’m not a demon.”

“No?” He sniffed and said, “So, you are _just_ a murderous witch.”

“Murderous? What the hell are you talking about?” Emma demanded.

He tilted his head to study her. “You must know what you’ve done. I’m not stupid, Emma.”

“And _you must be_ because I have no idea what you mean.”

“Are you to tell me that this isn’t another one of your games? Or are you trying to convince me that my brother’s death was not something you knew would occur.”

Emma sputtered. The air calmed around her, a gentler breeze that was still cold enough to freeze the sweat on her skin. Shivering, she said, “Your brother’s dead?”

“Your antidote came with a price. Magic always does. He died the moment we left here.”

“I didn’t know,” Emma said as he stalked towards her. His hook wasn’t raised, but she saw the darkness in his eyes and knew it was meant for her. And she felt too weak to stop it, too weak to do more than stand there, shivering.

“I didn’t know,” she said and shut her eyes.

When they opened, Baelfire lay beside her on the motel bed. His snores were not the comfort she always found them to be. In the dark of the room, cold metal caressed her skin, its sharp point inching closer.

In the dark of the room, she closed her eyes and saw his eyes, light dimmed blues staring back.

\--

Killian awoke in a sweat. It wasn’t unusual, nor was the green at the edges of his vision. But the blonde hair, close enough for him to curl around his hook, was new. The face, sharper, older, but still with the remnants of the girl he briefly knew. The form was much different - womanly, almost.

He'd remembered the eyes correctly, the sunlight within the green. Strange how he found light in a look so dark. Oh, he'd been right about the shadow. It clung to her the moment she'd stepped onto his deck.

There was a malevolence in the way she held herself and she hadn't changed at all, or so he thought.

"I didn't know," she'd whimpered her plea. Demon or Witch, evil in the form of a girl she may be, but he believed her. Trust did not come easy to him, but he believed her.

He shook his head and walked to the deck without bothering to dress. Looking out over the sea and to the island, he searched for any sign of her, but he could find none except the drumming in his ears.

 _Magic._  It had to be. Magic always had a catch. Perhaps this time it would catch her instead.

\--

She wasn't scared to dream. He had not put that kind of fear in her. As terrified as she'd been when she awoke, it didn't take more than a wracking of her memories - no, it was easier than that for her to bring his face to mind in that moment where he'd grabbed her and begged, with tears in his eyes, for her to save his brother. In that moment, jealousy had nearly taken her, a darkness she'd never thought would touch her in Swan Song. His touch had scared her enough that she could still recall the warmth of his hands, and that touch had been enough to shake unwanted memory from the clutches of forgetfulness.

However, it was something stronger than warm fingers that had her helping him. She'd wanted to do something good. Something that no one had ever done for her, but it was stupid to think it wouldn't backfire on her.

Things always did.

She'd killed his brother. Somehow, with that water, she'd killed him. All she had wanted was to do good. She might as well have let him die.

"Emma, do you want me turn out the light?" Baelfire asked, looking at her with concern.

"Might as well," she said and laid down to sleep.

She wasn't scared to dream, nor was she afraid when she awoke on Swan Song again. The night felt deeper, somehow, though the moon was just as bright as before.

Her steps were on automatic, taking her to the water. She touched a bare toe to the cold water. Getting wet was totally not in the cards for tonight.

Instead, she walked across the surface. Her magic kept her afloat and lifted her aboard the ship easily.

He was waiting.

"Evening, Emma," he said with a grunt.

Emma had politeness drilled into her by an overbearing, "Jesus sees you taking more than you should" foster father, so she offered Killian a "Good evening," as well.

"How did you get back to Swan Song?"

Emma asked this from the opposite side of the deck. She was safe there. There, the magic flowered. The closer she stepped to him, the more it would jump out of grasp.

"I flew, of course."

Grinning wildly, he scratched his chin. "Or did you mean something a little more philosophical? I came here in search of revenge."

Emma tugged the magic to her protectively. Licking her lip, she said, "Revenge against me, for your brother."

"Don't believe yourself special, Emma. You weren't the only reason, but yes, it was that memory that spurred me on."

Emma crinkled her brow in thought. He was leaving a lot unsaid. Not lying exactly, but not the truth either. He'd come here for her, not just the memory, and despite herself, despite his words, despite _sense_ , she felt...special.

"Thinking hard, are we?" he asked, drawing her eyes back to him.

He'd stepped closer and she hadn't even noticed.

"If not to kill me, why did you come back? Revenge against someone else?" She narrowed her eyes. "The person who took your hand?"

His gaze flickered away from her and it was subtle, the step he took back. Still, Emma noticed. She spent enough time, while shoplifting with Baelfire, watching for the tiniest movements that could mean their capture. It was impossible for her to miss the discomfort in his step and the far off look in his averted gaze.

"Took something more?"

His returned look was fierce.

"Something more, yes," he said.

She'd get no more out of him. It was probably time for this dream to end. She could pinch herself awake - or dive into the water and wake herself with the cold.

Words came instead.

"I thought it would cure him," she said.

"The path to hell is paved with good intentions. Or so they say in your world."

Emma laughed, but it choked out quickly. "How do _you_ know that?"

"Don't lose your pretty head, Emma, I've never been to your world. I have heard...stories."

Emma knew only one person he would hear stories from here. Did her Shadow count as a person? Was her Shadow still even hers?

"I'm sorry," Emma said finally.

His look took her from her dream once again, but she didn't awake scared.

She clutched at her pillow, rolling away from Baelfire. Everything felt dim around her, just that much sadder.

\--

He didn't dream of her for a very long time. Of this he could be sure, the chiming of the bell from that godforsaken island waking him every morning at the same time. It was ten days or so of this before he started recording the days to paper.

It was a year and a half before he stopped.

The Shadow still kept him up to date on Emma's activities. More and more however, he felt like he was only getting a small part of the story.

More and more, he felt choked by those past dreams.

"What are you thinking about, Captain?"

The Shadow glided over to where he paced the floorboards of Emma’s treehouse. It never remained dusty for it was his favorite place to think. Think of her and remember his reasons for coming here. Remember himself. This island sought to steal all that away from him and leave him not only trapped in the darkness, but happy to be encaged.

"Emma came to me in a dream," he admitted.

Over the years spent here, he'd come to recognize the Shadow's shifting tones. He listened intently for it now, looking for any twists in its words that would say more than the Shadow meant to.

Reading between its lines was a difficulty.

"Did she?" An uptick on the 'did.' "And what did she say?" The 'what' was said sly and slow as if he would not notice the Shadow’s eagerness.

"How did you know she said anything at all?" he asked, covering his razor sharp focus with a more curious tone.

"Perhaps, she told me. Or maybe I just like to watch you talk to yourself in your sleep."

Killian stiffened. He'd never thought himself safe, not anymore, not from these islands' beasts or its Shadow, but he thought he had at least privacy.

His chest lifted in a quiet laugh. The Shadow had become a better watcher than his own.

The Shadow's carefully worded blow hit him hard, but he recovered with a gracefulness he'd perfected. Smiling, he said, "Maybe I should return the favor."

"Oh, yes, maybe you should."

The tone had a strange seductiveness to it that the Shadow had never used before. He raised an eyebrow, but let it pass. It was something to think about later. After all, he had the time to do so, and right now he was on a mission.

"Emma confessed that she didn't mean to kill my brother and that she did not know of the water's true nature."

The Shadow cackled.

"Do you think she really did not know? Oh, Captain I didn't think you would be so naive."

He tensed. "Naive?"

"Who do you think she learned of that spring from? I taught her all she knew of this Island, but she was too busy...'playing games' to pay much attention to my warnings, just as your brother paid no mind to hers. A terrible cycle to be sure."

To be sure.

 _Too busy playing games._ At once he felt both rage and a deep and terrible aching in his chest, melancholia unshakable. Playing games all by herself on this lonely island, no parents to speak of - she'd been reclaiming a childhood stolen from her. It was a revelation that only made him bitter, not at her, but at the loss that bonded them.

It had been sunny when he first arrived here, but no less dark.

"Captain, are you alright?" the Shadow asked sweetly, _concerned._

Caring was not in its nature. Its sweetness hid the poison underneath.

"I have seen better days," he said, waving out at the clouded sky.

He imagined what it would be like to see the sun for once.

"How is it that you are able to leave this island?" he asked, not for the first time.

"For the same reason you cannot. When I dream, Killian, it is of brighter days than yours."

"You don't sleep," he argued. They both knew that to be true.

"But I do dream."

He imagined it winking. Imagined Emma winking at him, not as the child she was, but the older teen of his dreams. It was a strange vision, and for a moment it was blinding.

He lifted his gaze to see the sun pouring through the clouds. He tried to focus on it, but the clouds drifted back in quickly, caging the light again.

When he looked at the Shadow, it had its ghostly arms crossed on its chest. He imagined a pout on Emma’s face, but was not quite sure the look was just right.

"Brighter days than mine," Killian affirmed and looked back at the clouded sky, searching for that light in the dark.

\--

It would not leave her be.

The dreams did, but not the magic. It came to her in the smallest of moments. The bell on a convenience store door would startle white and yellow sparks out of her fingertips that she'd clench into her fist, desperate to hide the sight from Baelfire, from herself.

At night, if she lay on Baelfire's chest for too long, listening to the beating of his heart, her comfort would turn disquieting. Instead of a heartbeat, she'd hear drums. She'd recall the embrace of her Shadow, her arms so much colder than Baelfire's. Shuddering at the memory, Emma would feel her body lift away from his. Flying away from him, drawing her back to her Swan Song.

She couldn't bear clocks or watches. The ticking would give her a migraine of the likes that Excedrin couldn't help.

Once, Emma lashed out, unthinkingly letting loose all of her rising power in one fell swoop.

Frantic, she'd called Baelfire to bring the car around. They had to go, she said, and he didn’t even question her, just grabbed the bags out of her hands and stuffed them in the trunk. She left enough money behind to cover the cost of the broken clock, but she couldn't leave behind the memory of those shattered pieces, glittering like a sandy shore on the cheap green carpeting.

It would not leave her be, and after a while she didn't want it to. The magic thrummed inseparable from the blood pumping through her veins. Her magic had always been her sanctuary before Baelfire came and took its place, but if she couldn't hide from it any longer then it was better to just embrace it.

Better to leave Baelfire in the middle of the night and climb to the roof where she'd lay, floating above the concrete while she stared at the stars in the sky, looking for the right one.

She didn't have plans to return to Swan Song but still she searched, the magic's call irresistible.

It sounded in her ears, a song whose beat she recognized, but she could not remember the words.

\--

When he awoke standing on his deck, he knew that he was dreaming and that Emma had returned. He felt her just beneath his skin, like a spindle drawing his thread in.

He stayed where he was instead. She always came to him and he had no desire to venture beyond the semi-safety of his ship. Danger lurked in dreams. He had no use for more of it when he could see Emma skating across the water towards him.

She was safe in those dark waters, but he was not. The reality of that threw him.

He'd thought a lot about their shared dreams in the past few years, but had never posed the question of whose dream it was, perhaps because he'd been so sure it was his.

That left another question: Why was she safe here and not he?

He slid to the floor of his deck to ponder this and by the time she arrived, he still had not reached a satisfying answer.

"Emma," he greeted.

She touched down on the deck with a heavy gasp and he lifted his eyes to her to find her soaking wet. And older still, the youthfulness gone replaced by a flush of womanhood.

"Took a dip in the sea?" he asked, staring at the thin shirt clinging to her form. The night was warm, but she shivered in what he supposed were her night clothes: a sleeveless shirt and torn pants whose frayed edges rose above her knees. Emma may have left this land, but she still wore her clothes as wild as the untamed jungle.

"A mermaid pulled me under," she said. He detected a note of embarrassment in the way she tucked her hands behind her back.

"They will do that, but so long as it's only one of them and you watch for the teeth, you'll be fine."

She lifted her right hand up and it dripped with blood.

"I forgot to watch for the teeth," she said.

There was something light about the way she said it, self-deprecating instead of the defensiveness of their earlier dreams.

Killian felt lighter, too, like he could lift off the ground if he wanted.

"Here," he said, drawing to his feet and slipping his hand into his coat to grab his flask. It had been a while since he'd drunk from it but when he popped the cap, the rum smelled as potent as ever.

She did not move except to pull her bloodied hand protectively to her chest.

"Let me help," he said.

She shook her head. "I don't need it. I'll just wake up."

The dream world tightened around them in mockery of her words. She quivered on her feet and her eyes shifted restlessly. Reflected in the moonlight, she looked like some kind of star come to life, albeit a bleeding, soaking wet one.

"You know as well as I do that we are slaves to this magic. Just as you very well know that mermaid bites are poisonous. Let me clean the wound."

"With alcohol," she scoffed, eyeing his flask.

"Yes, Emma, with alcohol. It'll be a bloody waste of it, but I won't have you dying on my ship."

She stepped forward, a challenging tilt to her chin, shoulders thrown back and he was caught by a rogue reminder that she was older. Womanly.

He blinked long and hard while she walked forward and said, "What a sacrifice. Alright, buddy."

Emma moved to his side but stopped just a few feet across from him. Hesitant. He started to move his hook aside to clarify that it wasn’t a threat in this moment, but that wasn't what had her frozen. Instead, her eyes were on his face.

He cleared his throat.

"I promise this will only hurt a mere moment," he said and closed the distance between them.

It was only after Killian took her hand that her shoulders dropped and he could see the strain of the poison, already taking its toll on her.

He sighed and poured the rum across her hand.

"What the hell!" she cursed, tugging back in his grasp. He didn't let her go. "A mere moment, my ass," she followed it up with.

Colorful enough phrases to match the shades of red in her cheeks.

Her hand was slick with blood so he released her momentarily to pull out a scarf from his pocket as well.

"Your coat come with lollipops, too?" she asked upon seeing it.

It was strange to hear the humor in her voice, stranger still to return it with a delighted grin.

Hadn't he wanted to kill her?

He lifted Emma’s hand again and started to wrap the thin fabric around it. She saw the problem with this arrangement at the same time he ducked his head and started to tie the ends into a knot with his mouth.

"Watch it with the teeth," she said, voice breathy.

Her freckled arms trembled but the water was practically dry on them, the heat of the night having burned it away.

"I am always careful with them," he replied and tightened the knot one more time.

She trembled again and he was caught, another rogue thought of the innuendo he did not intend with his response.

The innuendo she heard.

Dashing the thought, Killian said, "The Shadow tells me you have been traveling."

"My Shadow?" she said and searched the skies as if expecting the creature to swoop down upon them. As if wanting it to.

Interesting. Her Shadow, she said, but he knew its magic to be a darkness quite different than her own.

It sucked in the light, whereas she reflected it. Her skin glowed and when she could not find the Shadow and turned her head back to him, her green eyes shimmered.

Emma put distance in between them, suspicious and accusing in her question of, "Why would she tell you that?"

"The creature has to say something to keep my attention."

She closed her mouth, brow furrowing into a confused frown. He'd shocked her into silence.

Shocked himself, too, in fact. It was an admission he would rather not have made. The details of his time spent here were between him and the Shadow.

 _Her_ Shadow.

"Does she not tell you of me?"

"No," Emma said quietly. "She never visited when..." She trailed off only for a moment, her gaze flickering. "She always stayed on her own when I was with William."

"Your traveling partner?"

"My friend," she said.

Her blush said more than her words.

It was easy to slip back into his hatred, watching the corners of her mouth lift and her eyes brighten at William's name. Easy to remind himself that they were not simply dreaming partners, but tied together along a line of hatred that ran so deep within him as to replace his very blood.

He recalled the boy's clothes in the treehouse, but Emma's patched outfit had been so boyish itself that he'd never noted it as strange.

"The boy left here with you.” The sharp jerk of her head confirmed this. “Perhaps one day I'll join you both," he said.

A hiss whistled through her bared teeth.

"Is that a threat?" she demanded.

He could feel her magic swell, but he fought against it. He wouldn’t bow to her. Whether it was his dream or hers, he’d been in this land too long to fear death at her hands.

Killian discarded that fear the same moment he sent Milah’s body down to the depths of the sea.

Grinning, he said, "I am no threat to him.”

He blinked, laughing in the face of the wind that she let loose, stumbling back and awake. He was in his cabin with no sign of her or that wind that ripped at his skin for the brief moment she caught him in it.

She was gone, which was for the best - for her. For him, it was a defeat, letting her slip out of his grasp. A self-defeat.

But he'd won something this evening. A name to her happiness and the flush of her cheeks. It was only when Killian began to settle back into his sleep that the rogue thought deemed it safe to enter his mind.

She'd blushed for him, too.

\--

For days, she'd been holding Baelfire close to her. At every opportunity, she'd grab his hand or poke his side or just watch him while he restocked the shelves at the supermarket they worked in.

For weeks, she waited for Killian to arrive while her magic built up, ready to burst at any given moment when she lost Baelfire to a crowd and the fear spiked.

She'd known from the beginning that their encounter would turn to shit. Emma hadn't needed the mermaid's bite to tell her that. She awoke in Swan Song in the middle of a storm, not knowing what side it would hit her from, just waiting for it to blow her away. But she had ignored the warning, and for what? The rum that he'd burned across her wound.

The smile Killian gave her when she’d _joked_ with him. Joked with the man who had come to kill her and who had destroyed her world the moment he and his brother invaded Swan Song.

What the fuck, Emma?

She found herself asking that question more and more and Baelfire began to notice. He was always easy with his smiles, but from the morning she awoke with those teeth marks on her hands, they began to lessen, replaced with the frowns she hadn’t seen for years. She could see the wheels turning in his head, leading him down a dark path that she wanted to protect him from.

But as everything she wanted, it drifted out of reach.

When her dreams sped her away to Swan Song again, she didn’t just race across the water like hell nipped at her heels, she pounced on Killian with the fury of the devil he claimed her to be.

And yet, he was the one who caught her off guard. Pinned beneath her magic and her knee, he laughed.

He waved at his prone form. "Yet you say you're no demon," he said and laughed again, scraping his hook against the wood.

“You’re the monster, not me,” Emma said though doubt crept in at his words and at the sight of her shaking hands, glowing with white light.

"I must admit, I was surprised to see you bleed the same color as I. Your Shadow on the other hand does not bleed at all. Even when I hold my hook to its throat..."

He was faster than she gave him credit for.

"Just. Like. So."

The curve of his hook rested beneath her chin and she breathed heavy against it. Her mind scrambled for a way to pull away without slicing her own throat. The bite remained when she awoke, so a wound like that would surely kill her.

And then who would protect Baelfire?

She pressed her knee harder into his chest and he winced. Instead of dropping his hand, he held the hook a little higher, the pointed edge that much closer.

They were at an impasse.

"Leave William out of this...whatever this is."

"Whatever this is? Emma, you know very well what this is," he said.

But she didn't, not when Killian looked at her and his blue eyes swelled with something more than hatred and beyond the echo of the bleakness she'd felt when he'd left.

The drumming turned to silence when he was around.

"Leave him alone," she said. She relaxed her weight on his chest a fraction. Tilting his head to the side, he considered her but did not drop his hook. Emma swallowed against it. "He's not a part of this."

"But he's a part of you," Killian said.

He drew back his hook

"And you want to destroy me? All of me?"

He shrugged.

"I made a vow that I intend to keep."

Killian sounded tired as he said it, but something clicked in her head. She heard a voice, her own but different - older, scared - "Killian, come back to me."

They both twisted at the sound of the bell ringing out across the islands.

"I'm right here," he whispered in response.

She couldn't possibly have said the words aloud. It _wasn't_ her. Killian looked just as bewildered as she felt, just as disoriented.

"Can you hear the ticking?" she asked, lifting off of him.

"When can I not hear it?" he asked drily. "Its noise is incessant. What a strange building to have on your island, Emma."

She folded her arms over her chest. "It isn’t mine. I don't know any Storybrooke. It's not even a real place."

She had checked once, googling it when she dreamed of its library doors opening, an old fashioned elevator inside, leading down to...she never knew, waking up before she reached the bottom.

"Perhaps the Shadow dreamt it up."

Her Shadow hated it more than Emma ever did, so Emma shook her head. It would have erased the building from existence if it could.

Besides, her Shadow didn’t dream. It always left that to Emma, even laughed when she suggested her Shadow catch some sleep as well. It was shrill laugh, now that Emma remembered it. Her memory played tricks, but her age gave her perspective. It was a colder sound than she thought it at the time.

“I created this world,” Emma explained. “So, maybe I did dream it, once upon a time.”

“Well can’t you get rid of it? It’s making my time here particularly unpleasant.” He grunted as he rose to his elbows. “Time, time, time. Immortality is worse when you can count down the hours you’ve spent living a half-life.”

Killian breathed out a tired sigh and lifted up so he could brush his hair out of his face. His eyes flickered shut and did not reopen.

Hesitantly, Emma asked, "Are you looking for a way out?"

He turned familiar dim eyes on her. "Is there a way out? Or is this just some childish fantasy I'm harboring? Perhaps your Shadow is right and I will never escape."

"But -"

But what? He just tried to kill her. Multiple times he'd terrified her and yet, she almost wanted him to escape. It didn't sit right with her that he should sound so defeated. He _did_ say that he’d made a vow, and though she knew that included her, she couldn’t stop feeling like it was wrong for him to stay in this dark place. Swan Song wasn’t his and it showed. Killian belonged somewhere else, and it was a whispering thought that said he belonged somewhere kinder.

Somewhere in the light.

"I escaped," she said. "And according to you, I'm a witch, a demon, the whole shebang. A monster can probably do it, too."

"That sounds like encouragement, Emma.”

There was no teasing in the tone, nor menace, but still she flustered.

"It isn't. I was just pointing out the flaws in your argument."

"Point taken."

He smiled and the ticking sounded louder. His words echoed and so did his smile, a vision that seemed about as real as this dream.

She blinked at him, eyes fluttering and he stared back, his blues bright and round with the same vision as her.

A beanstalk beside them, a giant’s castle behind them. A dream within a dream.

An anvil dropped into the pit of her stomach and she felt queasy and cold. "Just leave Bae alone, alright," she said, stumbling backwards.

His eyes widened, mouth parting slightly, and that was the last thing she saw before he disappeared and her room returned.

\--

"We need to talk," Baelfire said on his 24th birthday as he dragged an icing covered finger across her cheek.

Emma smiled. "About how if you do that again, I'll bite your finger off?"

"You won't."

He smirked and leaned across the motel couch to kiss her cheek. Its cheap plastic covering squeaked over the sound of her sigh. Her face went hot as he licked the icing away. It wasn't uncomfortable - they'd been together for almost a decade now, not counting Swan Song, but she felt like the kiss didn't belong to her.

Like he wasn't her Baelfire anymore.

Her breath choked up. They needed to talk always meant leaving. In every movie, every show, all it meant was goodbye.

Leaving. It had been so long since she'd been left behind, she almost forgot what it felt like.

"I know you've been upset lately, so I have an idea. How about we get out of here?"

 _We_. She blinked and her slipping fingers crumbled the cake in her hand.

"We just got here," she said.

"No, I meant, how about we get out of this - this life. We've got some money. We could move somewhere. Settle down."

She snorted. "Like where?"

_‘Neverland?’_

Never-where? She had only ever heard that voice - the voice that was _hers_ but not _her_ \- in her dreams, no, nightmares with Killian. She was definitely going crazy, but there wasn’t time to think about that when Baelfire stole a piece of her cake out of her hand, dropping more crumbs to the ground.

Smiling around the mess, mouth still mostly full, he said, “Well, I've been thinking. We've never seen Disney.”

Emma laughed. "You can't live at Disney."

His response was serious. "No, but somewhere close. Somewhere near there." Grinning his shy grin that reminded Emma of the boy he once was, the one that tolerated her magic but loved her world’s plainness so much more, Baelfire added, “I hear Tallahassee is nice this time of year."

From underneath his thigh, he pulled out a slightly crushed envelope.

"Happy birthday, Emma,” he said, almost a question as Emma dropped the rest of her cake on the plate and wiped her hands on her t-shirt before taking the envelope. The edges smeared with chocolate as she peeled it open because he’d gotten the bright idea to actually lick it closed, but it was worth it when she pulled out the two plane tickets to Tallahassee, Florida.

“I saved up a little bit here and there. Really, I was going to buy us a new car, but then I thought, it’s garbage anyway, we could just leave it behind and get a new one wherever we go.”

His smile was brilliant when he said, “I can see that you’re happy. You’ve got that half-smile on her face. So, we’re going, aren’t we?”

Emma felt her half-smile turn into a real one. Two tickets to Tallahassee, not one, but two.

 _Together_ was still their thing after all.

\--

"Are you not keen to return, Captain?"

Killian glanced up at the Shadow as it slipped out of the darkness of the skies. It had never travelled to his ship before. At least, not while Killian was there or, by its own admission, awake.

"To a place I cannot reach?" He split into a cheery smile. "Quite."

He turned away from the Shadow and stared back out across the Island’s sea. It had been days since she called her boy "Bae,” with the same loving tone that Milah had when she mentioned her son.

Bae. _Baelfire_.

Somehow, some way, Milah's son was alive and travelling, nay, cavorting with Emma Swan.

So many lines drew Killian and her together. It was hard to decide whether it was some trick of fate, destiny, or of something stronger that he had yet to decipher.

As much as he had yet to decipher what it meant that she had found happiness with Bae and left behind this land with him. For him, most likely; Milah had said her son was as much a dreamer as her and Killian had seen it in the boy's sad brown eyes, rounded with dreams that his mother would leave that bar and Killian behind and stay with him instead.

Mere dreams, and dreams were not meant to last.

Nightmares were a different tale. Nightmares haunted through the long waking hours, eating away at your strength until you entered sleep with nothing between you and its devouring jaws.

What was Emma then? A dream or a nightmare?

She'd found Milah's boy, loved Milah's boy with a strength that left Killian winded. She'd have done much worse than bruise his ribs had he given further voice to his threat.

Might have even killed him.

Killian laughed to himself, uncaring that the Shadow hovered beside him, watching, because he and Emma understood each other.

She'd have risked the slice of his hook to protect her love, and it was that very reason he bore the sharp appendage. _Love._

He stabbed his hook into the railing of his ship. His hand ached with phantom pains. For so long, he'd felt nothing of it, but with Emma’s plea - with Baelfire’s name falling out her mouth, so familiar, loving and caring - the pain had come back as so many things had.

Killian lifted his remaining hand, staring at the last sketch Milah had made of her son and of herself, a future torn away with her heart.

He thought of Milah's smile, that beautiful smile that he couldn't picture without his eyes on the self-portrait she’d drawn while he’d ran his fingers through her dark hair.

Killian could not remember its texture.

So many things had come back, but he felt at a loss.

His purpose had become muddled. The single minded focus he once possessed for revenge against Emma...he did not know what to do with it now.

She hadn't meant to kill his brother. She was out of reach. She was with Baelfire.

Three reasons to abandon that quest, yet his mind wanted to cling to it. It had driven him for so long: news of Emma giving him sick sense of hope.

Now all he had was a bloody knife to kill Baelfire's father and the Shadow that lingered at his elbow, waiting.

"I spoke to her again. Did you know?"

The Shadow positively thrived with the excitement Killian expected of it. Ever since he had told the Shadow of his first dreams, it had taken what it probably thought to be sly means of trying to ease Killian’s mind enough to reveal more of them.

"Know what?"

Killian grit his teeth. “Baelfire."

"William is the name he prefers.” The Shadow tutted but then added, “But I suppose since Emma deemed you worthy enough to hear it, he would not mind you calling him that. Emma is very important to him, probably the most important thing in his life.”

The Shadow was goading him. It pricked needles at his spine, sharp reminders of their tangled web. Kill the girl who unwittingly killed his brother and leave Milah’s son all alone in the world? Or leave his brother unavenged and allow Milah’s memory to live on with her son?

"What else have you been holding back?" he snapped.

"Shall I reveal all my secrets and ease your mind?"

Killian deadpanned. "I'm sure not a one would ease my mind.”

"But there would be no more secrets between us. Wouldn't you like that, Killian?"

It wasn’t goading any longer. Instead it lilted with seduction. Again, it was a strange tone that sounded even less like Emma than it normally did, but even more womanly.

"Secrets? As there were no secrets between you and Emma? She called you 'her Shadow' but you belong to no one except the darkness."

The Shadow waved him off. "But isn't that where she belongs as well? She killed your brother and will do the same to Baelfire if you let her. She may not mean to, but darkness does not mean to snuff out the light. It just...does."

There was light in Emma’s eyes. Light that even the darkness could not touch.

Still, he believed the Shadow. After all, the road to hell was paved with good intentions and with winding paths lined with all the bad ones.

"So, will you save him, Shadow? Or leave him to die?"

The Shadow laughed. “The answer is up to you.”

He did not trust the Shadow. Hell, he didn’t even trust himself, but with finality, he replied, “Save him.”

The Shadow’s laugh was mocking, but when it flew off, shouting, “As you wish,” all he heard was his own voice.

His lips burned with a phantom kiss. Touching his hand to them, he stared out across the sea as silence fell around him. The clock’s ticking had stopped. It was a dismal comfort, the heat on his lips the only thing that felt right.

\--

It watched them carefully as they prepared themselves. Emma’s laughter was brighter than it had been for years. Had it known what signs to look for, it would have nipped this in the bud before it began.

After all, that was its job.

The Shadow itself had other thoughts on the matter, but its thoughts were not allowed fruition. It had a job and as much as it would rather nip this in the bud with those pruning shears the housewives on Emma’s TV loved so much, it did its duty.

It allowed the anger to ripple through its shape, change it into what it once was before settling down into the shape it was forced to have. The look of a young girl long since gone.

Years on this world were such tiresome things. All they did was steal whatever they could get their hands on. However, the Shadow respected that, from a thief to a thief.

It kept watch as it always did and when Emma sped off in her car, towards their supermarket no doubt for her long shift, the Shadow waited for Baelfire to take the walk he always did.

That’s when it swooped in.

“Hello, Baelfire,” the Shadow said, floating into his path.

The boy - man at this point stepped back but the Shadow moved into its path before he could sprint in the other direction. He was trapped in the dead end alley.

It could be worse.

“I am not here to hurt you,” the Shadow said to Baelfire’s raised fists. It was not a lie. The Captain had said to save him, and the Shadow was _only_ doing what he’d asked.

And perhaps some of what he hadn’t asked.

“I’m here to save Emma.”

This caught Baelfire’s attention. “Save her from what?” he snapped.

“The very same thing you would have saved your father from. Magic, of course.”

Baelfire scoffed, but the sound was uneven. “Emma doesn’t need saving from magic. Not here.”

The Shadow ignored him. “You must have noticed. You’re losing her to it. In her dreams, she travels back and little by little, it welcomes her home.”

Baelfire remained quiet, so the Shadow went on. It was built for this, to open the wounds wide enough for it to slip inside.

“That world is no longer safe for her to return to.”

“Why not?” Baelfire demanded.

It was cute in a way that even the Shadow, mere black dust pulled together by magic, could understand. He wanted to protect her, fists still raised as if he could hit the Shadow out of existence.

“There is a new darkness there. The land responds to the people that walk its shores and swim its seas, and the person that walks there now…he would kill her if given the chance.”

Baelfire grimaced. “I wouldn’t let him.”

“Of course, you wouldn’t. So, you know what you must do.”

His brow furrowed. His face was so open with his emotions, it was no wonder Emma loved him so much. She could pick up a lie better than she wielded her magic, even, and Baelfire could never lie to her.

It would make this much easier.

“What do I need to do?”

“What are you _willing_ to do?”

“I don’t understand…”

“In order to protect her, you have to be willing to do anything.”

The shadow almost teased the words but resisted. That would only make Baelfire suspicious, and the Shadow needed him kept off his guard in order for this to succeed.

“I will do anything. Just tell me what it is.”

The shadow smiled, but he wouldn’t be able to see. Only it could feel the way its shadowed cheeks drew up in a smile that it had been so long since it had seen in the flesh. Baelfire was not the only one far from home.

“You have to kill the dreams.”

“How do I do that?” Baelfire asked eagerly.

“There’s only one way to kill a dream like hers. You have to destroy the source.”

Fed up, Baelfire practically growled the next words. “Just tell me.”

“Her love for you. It keeps her tethered to her magic. All you need to do is destroy that love, and she’ll be free to live her life.”

“I can’t…” He stammered as the Shadow knew he would. It was prepared for his weakness.

“You do want her to be free, don’t you? Or do you wish her to go back to the dark?”

Baelfire stiffened. The Shadow had never had any use for tears, but it did enjoy them. That it still had in common with its owner.

Yet, Baelfire did not let his tears fall. A pity, really.

“You don’t have to worry, Baelfire. I’ll keep watch over her.”

The Shadow drew out the silence between them, gave Baelfire time to come to terms with whatever decision he had made. It watched carefully, the expressions that flitted across his face until his jaw jutted out and he stared at the Shadow with eyes that were looking further on.

“I always have,” the Shadow said and took off, gliding through the air. It would not go far. This was the part the Shadow always liked.

The Shadow dreamed, too, and heartbreak had a way of making those dreams sweeter.

\--

Wrongness was a familiar feeling to Emma. Her whole life had been wrong, a nightmare fairytale that Disney would water down and make her a lost princess needing to find her way home instead of an orphan with no home to speak of.

Tallahassee. It would be home.

And yet, the thought felt wrong as she unlocked the door and stepped into their motel. Baelfire wasn’t there, but he often wasn’t when she came back to whatever motel they’d holed up in for that week. He liked his walks and he didn’t really recognize the time.

Something about wearing a watch turned him off.

She set her bags down on the bedside table and went to wash her hands, all the while the itch under her skin mounting past the point of bearable.

Emma didn’t notice the envelope until she went to turn on the TV. It was taped to the screen. Baelfire had scrawled her name across it in messy letters. He’d never got the hang of writing letters that weren’t pure chicken scratch.

Ripping it off the screen, she tore the letter open. It didn’t occur to her to connect the tension in her heart to the letter until after she read his words.

And then nothing really occurred to her at all.

Except as she came back to herself and noticed the letter lying on the floor at her feet, she remembered the black lines on Killian’s brother as the poison winded its way through him and she had to check her hands to make sure it wasn’t dreamshade in her veins.

It wasn’t.

So the heartbreak was as real as his words.

His “Sorry, but I think that it’s best that we don’t go to Tallahassee. I’ve rethought some things, and I’m sorry Emma.”

_Sorry, Emma._

She still had the tickets. She still had the car, but Baelfire was gone as he had come, out of her life like he’d stepped through a magic portal, into a better, Emma-less world.

A flash of light sparked in her room, and another and another. By the time the magic ceased its violent outburst, trails of fire scorched the walls and her fingers were lit with a lightning unlike that of any storm she’d ever seen.

\--

They never got caught. Together, they were safe.

Alone, Emma ended up sitting in a jail cell for arson.

 _Together_ made her bitter. More so, when they did inventory of all the belongings she had on her when she was caught - cash, her car keys, wallet and that envelope that should have burned with all the other things in that hotel room.

“Two tickets to Tallahassee, eh?” the clerk said with a huff. “You won’t need that where you’re going.”

Emma silently agreed. She wasn’t going anywhere at all.

She looked down at her chained wrists and stared at her palm, waiting for the magic to return as she instinctively knew it would not. It was gone. Wherever Baelfire had gone, it had gone with him.

Gone, and it wasn’t coming back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always I greatly appreciate the comments & kudos left on this fic!

**Author's Note:**

> So, this AU I've been working on for quite some time and it's very close to my heart. I plan to have 10 chapters for it and hopefully update it once every week/week in a half (depending on how long the later chapters take to write). As always, I appreciate any feedback (though especially on this AU because as I've said, it's precious to me.) This chapter is very short, but longer chapters to come (as always for me).


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